Amazon Extends AutoRip, Now Offers Free MP3s of Vinyl Purchases

Great news for vinyl lovers. Amazon has extended its AutoRip program, which gives customers free MP3s of any music they purchased on CD, to vinyl records.

As of today anyone who purchases an AutoRip vinyl record will receive a digital 256Kbps version of that album, which is free to download and will be stored in Amazon’s free cloud player. Like its CD AutoRip initiative, the vinyl AutoRip program is retroactive to any album purchased since 1998.

There are already about 5,000 AutoRip vinyl albums available, from Miles Davis’ “Kind of Blue” to Mumford & Sons’ “Babel.” Unfortunately, not all records are included–such as the Beatles’ reissued box set, which came out last fall. But the program should be welcome news to vinyl collectors, who until now have had to manually digitize their albums, a time-intensive task.